This invention relates to computer-based shopping. More specifically, the present invention relates to software tools for developing and operating Web sites.
Electronic shopping systems currently exist which permit merchants to sell inventory to consumers over a computer network. Merchants now use computers to publish information about their products on one or more electronic pages (e.g., text and graphics displayable on a computer screen) and to elicit product orders from consumers. Likewise, consumers use computers to access information describing products and to communicate orders to a merchant.
With the increasing popularity and accessibility of the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, the number of merchants using and desiring to use the World Wide Web to advertise and sell products is growing rapidly. The World Wide Web is a global information system in which information is exchanged over the Internet using a set of standard protocols. An existing Web-based electronic store typically comprises a collection of Web pages which describe inventory and which include on-line forms allowing consumers to place orders. Consumers use Web browsers to access the Web pages of electronic stores to examine information about available products and to submit product orders.
As described in more detail below, existing Web site development tools are not well suited to the task of developing and managing the content of an electronic store, and do not provide the functionality and flexibility needed by developers to efficiently generate and control a dynamic store environment of the type needed in the electronic marketplace. Existing systems and methods for designing and maintaining electronic stores are burdensome or require a high level of technical knowledge or both. The present invention seeks to solve these and other problems.
According to one existing method of designing and managing an electronic store, the electronic store is generated by manually assembling and compiling a collection of fixed Web pages. This method generally requires the store designer to have an intimate knowledge of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) to update the content or format of any page. As required by this method, a store designer must learn numerous HTML tags as well as specific parameters for each tag. The store designer uses a standard text editor to edit Web pages by embedding tags, parameters and informational content in text files representing the Web pages.
The burden of altering the content or format of individual Web pages has been eased somewhat by HTML authoring systems which permit Web page designers to work in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) manner. Users of existing HTML authoring systems do not need to learn HTML and, instead, use visually oriented commands such as xe2x80x98bold,xe2x80x99 xe2x80x98italicxe2x80x99 or xe2x80x98center justifyxe2x80x99 to emphasize or position informational content. A user sees only the visual effect of the command, while the HTML authoring system embeds HTML tags in an underlying text file.
However, a merchant""s inventory typically fluctuates greatly, and electronic catalogs require frequent updating due, for example, to changes in product availability and price, the introduction of new products or product lines, upcoming promotions, or product discontinuances. Many merchants use an inventory control system to manage their ever-changing inventory. Yet, it is highly inefficient for a merchant to have to both update inventory through an inventory control system and also use an HTML authoring system to ensure that the same set of changes are accurately reflected in a collection of Web pages.
Moreover, the different inventory control systems commonly use very different types of databases to host the inventory data and use different hardware and software platforms. Very few, if any, of these inventory control systems make information accessible via the World Wide Web, and many merchants do not have the time, skill or resources to design or develop software extensions that would make their inventory control systems compatible with the World Wide Web.
Many merchants now operating electronic stores simply lease Web server resources from a Web service provider and hire skilled technicians to periodically update store Web pages. These merchants thus have no direct control over their electronic stores and have no automated way of taking information from an existing inventory control system and moving that information into a collection of Web pages. What is needed is a way of providing merchants full control over the design and content of their electronic stores and a way to automatically transfer current information from inventory control systems into Web pages.
Another problem encountered by merchants attempting to operate electronic stores is the tedious job of periodically adding or deleting categories of products and reorganizing products into different categories. Many on-line catalogs presenting inventories of electronic stores use a top-down menu approach wherein an initial catalog page appearing on a consumer""s computer screen lists general product categories. If a user selects one of the general categories, another page appears on the computer screen presenting a narrower subordinate menu of product lines. Thus, a user navigates from high level menus to lower level menus, eventually reaching a page that describes an individual product. This type of menu navigation is popular on the Internet and on other networks, because it is easy for consumers to understand, and allows consumers to reach a particular product in a convenient and timely manner. However, top-down menu style catalogs are difficult to design and maintain. This is because each of the pages of such a catalog typically includes multiple hyperlinks, each hyperlink providing a precise reference to another page. As a result, a change to one page may require changes to many other pages, creating a complicated and tedious editing job.
More specifically, to effectively use the World Wide Web for advertising and selling products, merchants must create and edit not only the categories and products presented on a page, but also the hyperlinks tying a set of Web pages together such that a user can navigate the pages conveniently. This process is tedious, time consuming, and highly susceptible of introducing errors, especially when altering hyperlinks of a large set of Web pages.
The present invention overcomes these and other problems by providing a software architecture for allowing merchants to design and efficiently manage computer network-based electronic stores. In one embodiment of the present invention, a software system is provided which includes software tools permitting a store designer to use an enhanced Web browser to design and manage an electronic store. The software system is referred to herein as the Merchant Workbench. Using the Merchant Workbench, the store designer uses a graphical user interface to create and edit product information, establish categories of products, and organize a navigable hierarchy of products and categories. The Merchant Workbench allows a merchant having little or no knowledge of HTML coding or database queries to design an electronic store wherein a collection of template Web pages is integrated with a product information database (or inventory control system) such that information is extracted on-demand from the database, merged with the Web page templates, and presented to consumers.
In a preferred embodiment, the Merchant Workbench includes an enhanced Web browser that accesses an electronic store design application via the Internet. Thus, even though an Web site is hosted by a stationary computerxe2x80x94even one leased from a Web service providerxe2x80x94the user (e.g., a merchant) can design and modify the organization and inventory of the store from almost anywhere in the world (i.e., any geographic location having standard telephone lines).
In operation, the enhanced Web browser accesses Web pages of an electronic store design application (hosted by a store Web site) to generate a graphical user interface. This graphical user interface displays information about the products and groups of products offered by the electronic store. Specifically, the graphical user interface displays icons, each of which represents either a group (i.e., category) of products or an individual product. The graphical user interface arranges the icons to visually illustrate hierarchical relationships between the groups and products sold by the electronic store (e.g., an xe2x80x98Automotivexe2x80x99 group contains a xe2x80x98Sedansxe2x80x99 group, and the xe2x80x98Sedansxe2x80x99 group contains a xe2x80x98Toyota Camryxe2x80x99 product, a xe2x80x98Honda Accordxe2x80x99 product, and a xe2x80x98Mercury Sablexe2x80x99 product).
The flexibility provided by the Merchant Workbench in designing a store structure advantageously permits a merchant to design an electronic store having a navigational layout which resembles an actual store. For example, the hierarchy comprising products and product groups may be conveniently based on the product categorization for an actual store, such as floors, departments, subdepartments, aisles, shelves, and individual products. Thus, even consumers new to the Internet experience friendly and familiar shopping elements.
In one implementation of the Merchant Workbench, the graphical user interface of the enhanced Web browser displays the hierarchy of an electronic store using the same model utilized by many personal computer operating systems to graphically display the file structure hierarchy of a computer storage medium, such as a floppy disk, hard disk, or CD-ROM. Such hierarchical displays are generated, for example, by the File Manager program of Windows(copyright) version 3.1 and by the Microsoft Explorer program of Windows(copyright) 95. These hierarchical displays show a subordinate file directory level as an icon positioned below and to the right of an icon representing a parent directory.
Using an hierarchical display model familiar to millions of personal computer users reduces the need for merchants to learn a new interface. In one embodiment of the present invention, an icon representing a store is related to subordinate icons representing departments of the store which, in turn, are related to further subordinate icons representing subdepartments of the store, each of which may be related to a collection of icons (or other screen elements) representing individual products.
To modify information about a product or a group using the enhanced Web browser, a merchant selects a representative icon, enters or modifies product or group information, and stores the data in the product information database. The merchant can also perform simple drag-and-drop operations on icons to modify relationships between products, groups, or both (e.g., an icon representing a xe2x80x98Geo Prismxe2x80x99 product is dragged from a location hierarchically subordinate to a xe2x80x98Sedansxe2x80x99group icon and dropped at a location hierarchically subordinate to an xe2x80x98Economy Carxe2x80x99 group icon, thereby creating a relationship between the xe2x80x98Geo Prismxe2x80x99 product and the xe2x80x98Economy Carxe2x80x99 group and deleting the relationship between the xe2x80x98Geo Prismxe2x80x99 product and the xe2x80x98Sedansxe2x80x99 group).
Data records of a product information database store information comprising an inventory of an electronic store, including information about products and groups and the relationships between them. Software tools of the Merchant Workbench create and update the data records of the product information database in response to user manipulation of the graphical user interface.
The Merchant Workbench provides a further advantage over present electronic store systems by monitoring the shopping behavior of consumers to gather traffic analysis data, and by using the traffic analysis data to customize the navigable store hierarchy presented to each consumer. The store hierarchy presented to each consumer is customized according to recorded shopping habits of the particular consumer to make the on-line shopping experience more convenient and expedient as well as more pleasant.
In another advantage over present electronic store systems, the Merchant Workbench stores information indicating that particular products (cross-sale products) are often sold together. Consumers ordering one of such products are automatically presented with links to web pages describing related products.